The Dog Log

by Richard Lucas

  I make the same plan over and over if she and I were to talk: what I would say, how I’d behave, what I’d need to hear her say—start a process of reconciliation. I feel very mature and proud when I think about those things, but Roxy can’t see it. Then again, I don’t know what she sees. Mutual friends tell me they don’t know what she’s thinking. She won’t talk about us. So all I can do is look at her actions, which I know very little about, except that she does not contact me. If she does, I’m ready. This time I want to get married.

  There—I said it. I should have said it to her. Should have said it to her. Why hadn’t I? I’m an idiot—I’m not supposed to be thinking about her, or waiting, yet I have an exact way in my head that the two of us could be married, probably in six months: 1) Talk, 2) Reconcile, 3) Plan, 4) Move in, 5) Marry.

  See that? Typical. I put “Plan” in there at number 3. That’s me subconsciously buying time, implanting hesitation. Change it to a four-point plan, damn it.

  I’ve had too much wine. You want a confession, Sheriff ? You’re getting it all out of me tonight. I’m ashamed of what I’m about to tell you, but I have to tell someone. It’s not all shame. Part of me is proud of it. But the shame is how silly I am, how love-blind that I’ve been through this breakup.

  Here it goes—I needed a battery for my watch, a beautiful, bold, black-and-white Swiss Army diving watch that Roxy gave me several years ago that I love. I’d still been wearing it, even though it had been frozen on 7:15, as a reminder to get it taken care of. Most of the time, however, it only made me think that it was 7:15. It was Friday evening last week. I’d just had a really positive meeting with that anesthesia client. It generated a bunch of new ideas, and so I thought I’d picked up enough new work to make it through a month, maybe two. I know I should’ve mentioned some good news to you, finally, but you’ll soon see why I didn’t. Plus, that client called and canceled all the new stuff on Monday, so it’s gone anyhow. But the thought of some real income that night, plus the existence of Roxy’s “ubiquitous zigzags” text that morning, had me on a momentarily positive zig.

  On the way home, I stopped at Wanna Buy a Watch?, the store on Melrose just east of La Cienega, to get a watch battery. Very cool place, if you haven’t been—vintage jewelry, watches, that stuff. It was actually higher-end than I’d anticipated, so I was embarrassed that all I wanted was a seven-dollar battery. A very appealing, retro-attractive woman—midforties, red hair, curves like Mulholland Drive—approached me. She was dressed perfectly for the store: red heels, black fishnets, pencil skirt, vintage cardigan (three buttons undone, the lowest touching the tail of the orange kitten embroidered on it). With her fresh cherry smile, she asked how she could help. I was a little disappointed that she didn’t ask if I wanted to buy a watch. She had a flower pinned behind her left ear that smiled as warmly as she did. I told her about my watch, and she said that she’d have to take it to the back, so it would be a few minutes.

  “Feel free to look around,” she said with the confident coyness of knowing I’d already looked around her.

  The collection they sell there is incredible. It reminded me of Roxy, because she loves vintage jewelry. Necklaces, bracelets, watches that would have looked amazing on her. And then there were rings—a lot of stones I don’t know anything about—and then diamonds. One ring in particular practically smashed through the glass at me. It had three stones across the top, and a very cool pattern of zigzag lines that made up the base, silver, gorgeous—Art Deco. I never really thought about diamond rings, but now I was looking at one that was a perfect match for someone I loved. My heart filled with virile madness and an unstoppable tear blurred my vision. I pulled it together because I didn’t want to be an emotional wreck when the saleslady returned with my working watch and seven-dollar fee.

  In a moment, I smelled the light fragrance of her flower, “Would you like to see anything?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said trying to unshake my voice. “You’ve got amazing stuff here.”

  “Is there someone special that you’re shopping for?”

  “I’m not really shopping, just browsing while I waited.”

  “I’ve been in this business for a long time,” she said. “And men don’t browse at diamond rings unless they’re in love.” She turned the key and opened the case. “I’m Valerie. I bet it’s the Art Deco you’re liking. It’s vintage 1930s,” she said as she slipped it onto her little finger. “It’s very small though, too small for me, unfortunately.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a 4½.”

  “So there is someone special,” she smiled. “Lucky for her, it’s a 4½.”

  My heart hammered as if it were breaking down a door, but the adrenaline felt good.

  So, this is how it feels, I thought. I’d never come close to this kind of clarity about being a man. The sense of commitment warmed my blood like a shot of bourbon after a swim in a cold lake. I could share my life, be part of a family with someone, a true partner. Valerie continually rotated her hand ever so gently against the light, bewitching the diamonds into a captivating aurora borealis.

  This is the perfect ring for the perfect person at the perfect moment, I thought. I could do this.

  “You’re so in love. I can see it in your eyes. It’s very sweet,” she said.

  “But she’s not in love with me, unfortunately.”

  “Are you sure? I find that very hard to believe,” she said.

  She was good, very good.

  “We were together for seven years—”

  “Seven?”

  “Yeah, that’s my fault. She ended it a few months ago. The trouble is, I think it was because she thought I wasn’t committed enough.”

  “Then where did the seven years come from?”

  “Well, I wanted to work it out, but she doesn’t seem to, so—” But ubiquitous zigzags, I thought. All of life is ubiquitous zigzags.

  “Yet here you are looking at the perfect ring,” she said.

  This was a life moment—a long time coming—but finally facing me now.

  “Yes,” I said, gathering my external self, “but not at the perfect time. I think it’s too late, unless she calls or something to show she wants to work on it. This is crazy for me to be standing here looking at this.” Crazy, yes, but the best feeling I’d ever had. “I need to step away.”

  “I think all she needs is for you to show her how much you love her,” she said.

  I heard the courage of my mother in those words. I was in a hyperextended spiritual universe of masculinity and femininity, surrounded by flowers atop the peak of a mountain where two people come together to unite forever at the very edge of the space.

  “That’s truly all a woman ever asks for.”

  That punched me in the teeth. I smiled. “But she didn’t ask for that. She ended the relationship. There’s a difference. It wasn’t an ultimatum. It was a decision.”

  “You think so much like a man,” she answered. “This isn’t a mathematical calculation or a game plan for a basketball team. These are emotions. This is love. If you were together for seven years, then she truly loves you, and she will for the rest of her life, no matter what. If you give her this ring, she’ll know everything she needs to know.”

  This woman, Sheriff, wants me to buy an engagement ring for my ex-girlfriend.

  “That would be insanity,” I said. “I’ve left her alone. We’ve only talked once, and she didn’t respond to that as I’d hoped. I came in here for a new battery because mine is dead. Do you have it? To suddenly show up and give her an engagement ring is the stuff of a restraining order. What would she tell people as she wore it around town? Oh, this?—Richard, my ex-boyfriend, gave it to me a few months after I broke up with him. How embarrassing for me.”

  She probably could get a restraining order on me for that, right, Sheriff ?

  “There’s nothing more beautiful than giving a woman you love a special ring like this,” Valerie insisted. “If she doesn’t want to consider it a
n engagement ring, you can simply tell her that the years you had together were something that you treasure and that this ring is a symbol of that love and how special she will always be to you.”

  How I wish that could work—one giant, enormous, sweeping, all-encompassing gesture of commitment to fix it all in the grasp of a moment, something I should have done two, three years ago, at least, that could give me the future that I’ve been missing. Maybe in a novel or a romantic movie, but in real life, it was a few steps across the river from romance toward lunacy.

  But the three prisms of dancing diamond dreams were hypnotizing me.

  Is this just my typical commitment-phobic way of thinking? I thought. Always finding a reason to do the same non-thing? But wait, I don’t have a commitment problem. She does. She’s the one that ended it. I wanted to work on it, right? But maybe she only wants to work on it if there is a commitment from me. She did text me.

  “You can put a deposit on it, and we’ll hold it for you for sixty days—two months. That way you can think on it, and it will still be here,” Valerie explained, as if that would be a perfectly non-insane thing to do.

  If I don’t tell anyone about it, it won’t feel so pathetic, I thought. And that was that.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, and I handed her my credit card, my heart, and my secret. I was about to get a decent-sized check. I couldn’t leave that ring to rest on another woman’s hand. I made an actual decision, one that could last for sixty days, or forever. Valerie looked at me as if I were a lumberjack who’d just come home from a hard day’s work and wanted his dinner hot, delicious, and in front of him on the kitchen table right after we throw everything off and fuck on it. I believe that her breasts heaved. All I would lose would be $400, and now there’s a sense of a deadline on this thing. If Roxy doesn’t come around within the two months, then it’s over. There’s surety in that.

  We added the battery to the charge, and I left.

  It was actually 7:15, and in a minute, it would finally be 7:16.

  The thoughts of those diamonds drilled through my head like a strip miner setting explosives.

  The deposit was probably stupid to do, Sheriff. It certainly doesn’t make me think about Roxy less, and it makes the loss deeper with a sparkling symbol on top. Well, she’ll never know. Only Valerie and I—and you. I wonder what Valerie will think when the sixty days are up and I haven’t returned, as she takes the ring off “Hold” and puts it back up for sale.

  “He should have done what I told him to do,” she’ll mutter. “Too bad.”

  All romance is dead.

  January 17, 6:30 PM

  Walking and feeding. Lauren peeing. Nelson eating grass. Still cleaning. Kitchen floor getting there. It’s disgusting.

  January 18, 11:10 PM

  I took the dogs on two fruitless walks today. But concerning tonight’s walk, I asked Casino to do me a simple favor. It’s Saturday, and I had an invitation to a party. I thought I’d try being at a social gathering. This would be the first night that I haven’t been here to walk the dogs. I asked Casino if he’d do it for me. Casino’s a sweet guy and is not one to refuse a little favor. He loves doing favors because he’s never hesitant to remind you of what he’s done for you lately. I think he’s got a quid pro quo notebook. He finds the sneakiest ways to drop in favor reminders at unsuspecting moments that make you think, He’s still thinking about that? For example, in the middle of a fun debate about, say, an athlete’s bad temper, he’ll throw in a line like “What he needs to do is to cool off. Remember that time when I helped you install your air conditioner? I cut my finger pretty bad doing that, too, I think, right?”

  I don’t think society should have to function on a mandatory counterbalance of kindness. Maybe that’s the way Irene had been weighing the barking—that since I’d done nothing for her, why should she do anything for me? Yes, why? How do you change a person like that?

  So I asked Casino—could he please walk the dogs later on, the night walk? Reluctance tightened his face, but he said he’d do it—after all, this is the jackpot of favor debt.

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Just wrap the leashes around your wrist and fingers. And if you don’t feel like picking up after them, don’t worry about it. It’ll be dark, no one’ll see.” I knew that was foremost in his mind. It had been a huge hurdle for me, bagging that stuff. If he gets caught and gets the fifty-dollar ticket, that’s his problem. I’ll just owe him an even bigger favor then.

  The party sucked. Half the people there knew Roxy, but no one mentioned her name. So uncomfortable. The thought that she’d show up had me panicked. Alone or with a guy, it would kill me to see her as an independent, not-smiling-with-me person. But I also stressed about why she wasn’t there. Was she somewhere more exciting, with someone more exciting? Does she want to avoid me? I shouldn’t have gone. This anxiety was just what I’d feared. My eyes were darting everywhere, trying to read people’s thoughts, watching the front and back doors. I drank a bottle of wine myself, left early, and went home.

  Casino stopped me in the driveway as I arrived. He wasn’t his usual bubbly self. Can’t be good. “Hey, Casino, how’s it going?” I said, trying to change my assumption.

  “Not good,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but—one of the dogs ran away.”

  Boom.

  “Which one?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked that, as if it would matter.

  “I don’t know which,” he said. “I can’t tell them apart, and I don’t know their names.”

  I understood his defensiveness. They’re not his dogs, and the first move is to blame them anyhow. I get that.

  “OK, can I please have Irene’s keys back?” I said. “I’ll go see which one’s there.”

  He followed me to her door. How could he have screwed this up so badly? Then again, Lauren had gotten away from me, too.

  “We have to figure something out,” I said, as I unlocked the screen door and waves of dread along with it. “What do people do when they lose a dog? Who do we call?”

  I was saying “we” because I wasn’t going to let him out of this.

  Then, as I pushed my key into the deadbolt lock, I heard barking. I stopped. My head drooped against the door.

  Oh no, not Nelson, I thought. The barking has to mean it’s Lauren inside. My lungs jumped for oxygen. A runaway dog, that tiny, who can’t even bark. In that moment, I thought of his big brown eyes and the way he’d turn up toward me and smile as if to thank me after he’d licked the last bits of food from his dinner bowl. That damn tongue that hangs out a little—he’d wiggle it around to get any food off his nose. There’s no way he wasn’t smiling then. I’d never really acknowledged that little moment until my mind flashed it at me just then. And now he was God knows where with no collar or tags.

  “Go ahead, Richard,” Casino prodded with his hand on my shoulder, ushering me forward. We were going to have to face this, one way or another.

  I opened the door, and the stench, which I’d forgotten, hit me like a Volvo in a crash test. I got lightheaded. Lauren jumped wildly against my leg. I reached for the light switch and prepared myself to see a room with just Lauren, half dog-empty.

  With the burst of light from the chandelier, Casino laughed. It was Nelson that was jumping against my leg. Lauren was sitting on Irene’s chair wagging her tail.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Casino chuckled. “The one on the chair got away from me on the walk, but I got her back. When I saw you panicking, I thought I’d fuck with you a little bit.”

  He was getting quite a kick out of himself.

  “Damn, it smells in here,” he said.

  “Holy fuck, Casino, I would kick you in the balls if I thought they were big enough to feel any pain,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was crazy,” he went on. “We were heading up the street, and the one took off, got up to Romaine, and then took a right toward Fairfax.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “For sur
e. A couple of people up the street saw me running and screaming and took off after her too,” he said. “Nobody could catch her. She was like Barry Sanders out there.”

  I picked up Nelson. This was the first time I’d held him—and without the gloves on.

  “Shut up, Lauren! Shut the fuck up!” I yelled. Her barking was making me want to kill her. This is twice that she’s run. I fucking hate her.

  “She didn’t hit Fairfax, did she?” I asked.

  “Yeah! She ran right across, no hesitation, near Lola’s,” he said. This part was no joke to him. “I couldn’t believe she didn’t get hit. I ran out into traffic myself. I was waving at cars to stop. I’m lucky I didn’t get killed.”

  “Except that I might kill you right now.” You’re hardly a hero here, I thought. You really screwed up.

  “How’d you get her back?” I asked.

  “Luckily, she just froze over there on the other side of the street. I think she freaked herself out and ran out of breath or something,” he said. “Then, I was able to grab her and bring her back.”

  “God, Irene would die if something happened,” I said. “And fuck you for fucking with me.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “You’re so funny when you’re all worked up.”

  I hate it when people say that to me. People suck. What a shitty night. Thank goodness I was drunk and nothing ended up happening. I have to get a handle on controlling Lauren. And Casino has successfully extricated himself from ever being asked this favor again. Congratulations.

  “I’ve saved that one twice now from running away,” he noted.

  Well done, you evil genius, I thought. Now they’re back to being my responsibility alone.

  January 20, 12:20 PM

  I figured it out. I bought a set of those rope clips yesterday that rock climbers use, carabiners. I clipped the two leashes together at the handles so that if one gets away, it’d be dragged down by the other like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. And then, with the carabiner, I hook the leashes to a belt loop on my pants so they can’t get away from me in any way. I have to spin around quite a bit during the walks to keep untangled, but I believe it’s a stroke of genius.